The numbers are stark for Donald Trump. Down in Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina.
Hillary Clinton is starting to spend a little money in Georgia and Arizona, states that any Republican running for president ought to be able to count on.
The road to 270 electoral votes — the threshold to clinch the presidency — increasingly looks to be a series of uphill climbs and dead ends for Trump in the usual collection of most competitive states.

In his centerpiece speech on the economy, Donald Trump wrongly accused Hillary Clinton of proposing to increase middle-class taxes and blamed America's crumbling roads and bridges in part on the money spent on refugees, a minuscule expense in comparison with infrastructure.
A look at some of his claims and how they compare with the facts:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump filled a converted Air Force hanger on Friday in Denver for an hour-long speech that didn’t disappoint an avid crowd, including Republican elected officials, GOP candidates and Trump supporters who say they are counting on the billionaire to shake up a corrupt system and get the country back on track.

“National security” is a highfalutin phrase for a problem that can be stated quite simply: We have enemies. What do we do about them? Since this is a matter of life and death, it’s worth asking: What national security policies can we expect the next commander-in-chief to implement?
Let’s acknowledge that we can only make educated guesses. Presidential candidates have been known to say what they think voters want to hear and then, after winning election, go off in an entirely different direction.
Beyond that, circumstances change. President George W. Bush did not come into office expecting to spend most of his energy fighting terrorists and their sponsors. President Barack Obama’s experience recalls a quip often attributed to the communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

Do you care about the quality of your food and where it comes from? If you do, and you should, it is time to be concerned about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
The TPP, like other trade deals before it, is being sold as a boon to the American agricultural industry. But the real track record of these agreements tells a different story. In reality, the Pacific trade pact represents a major, ongoing threat to American food processing workers, family farmers, ranchers, fisherman and consumers.
Nearly every trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement has promised to stimulate the U.S. agricultural industry. The unfortunate truth of these agreements is that they flood American grocery stores with cheap and low-standard foreign meat imports. Not only is this bad for our families, it puts U.S. farmers, ranchers and workers at a significant disadvantage as they struggle to compete with countries who pay workers mere pennies per hour.

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